All over the South the Daughters of the Confederacy erected heroic statues to the men who fought to keep Black people enslaved. Those were the statues that loomed over Southern communities for about a century, before they finally recently started coming down, and even now racists are plenty sore about their removal.
We fought a Civil War. The South wanted to retain its fine traditions, which were basically slavery. We have photos of some of the freed slaves — one in particular of a man baring his back to display the deep corded keloid scars on his back, testament to numerous whippings. We have oral testimonies and written testimonies from survivors.
There were Black heroes who spoke and wrote and were activists against slavery. We honor them to this day. But slavery was not going to end in the United States without federal legislation, and they and everybody else knew it.
As it happened, Abraham Lincoln was the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation to set these people free. (At which point we fought a Civil War.) Did he or didn’t he do this? Does he or doesn’t he deserve a statue?
Were Black people in a state of subjugation (on their knees) before then or were they not? Would changing the pose of the freed slave to standing upright make the difference to a modern sensibility? Is there something shameful to Black people today about their ancestors having once been enslaved? Shouldn’t all of us have to reckon with that in our public art, or should it be smoothed over somehow?
Do we have to melt down that statue and start over in order to align with modern feelings? This statue is a particular rendition of our common history, from a particular time — What exactly are we rectifying in removing it? If a different interpretation of history is called for now, would it be served by erecting a companion statue rather than removing the original?
Just asking for a friend, as it were.
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